I guess my expectations were too high. I normally try to ignore the hype, and apply a sort of anti-hype to my brain when a game is declared the undisputed greatest game ever (since last week). However, I approached Grand Theft Auto IV with the expectation that it would be the quintessential greatest game ever, and after 5 hours of play I was sorely disappointed in my purchase.

I have discovered through retrospection and discussion with fellow gamers that my complaints are minor. However, a game that got an average score of 97% (according to game rankings) shouldn't have as many complaints as it does. As a first impression, this game gets a MEH. Perhaps later it will be upgraded.

First of all, when you turn on the game you have to watch a 90 second intro video consisting of the rockstar logo in multiple colors, and a variety of concept art from the game done in the style I'm sure you're familiar with. Apparently the game is busy loading the game engine during this time, but since it doesn't actually tell me that I spend more than a minute slapping all the buttons on my controller in a vain attempt to get it to hurry the hell up. Strike one.

Then you get into the game. Your character (Niko) is a bad guy. Not "badguy" as in "goodguys vs badguys" but an actual no good human being. That's hard to get used to. In a normal game you accomplish your goals by killing "the enemy" or otherwise thwarting a force actively antagonistic to you. In GTA you do things like terrorize business owners for protection money, assassinate innocent people who "pissed off" crime lords, etc. It makes you feel dirty, and doesn't lend any sort of grandness to your actions. I ended up feeling cheap. However, the character is a criminal, and I can understand that. The storyline is supposed to be epic and sweeping and all that, so it's possible that I haven't seen the part where Niko renounces his evil past and becomes a crusader for righteousness, but I'm not holding my breath. The other main character in the beginning of the game (your cousin Roman) is such a damn jackass that the first thing I did upon acquiring a weapon was shoot him in his stupid face, then reload the game. The rest of the characters are better written, but most of them have thick accents (so far) that make them impossible to hear. Especially while trying to run from the cops. My wife had to read the subtitles for me and try to remember if they were giving me any useful information so she could tell me later. There's a Jamaican guy you meet about an hour into the game, and let me tell you right now: he doesn't say anything.

Also, this game is HARD. I've been playing video games for 20 years, I've written strategy guides, I'm the guy that's beaten Emerald and Ruby weapons, min/maxes all his characters, and sets up the game to beat itself, and I died a half dozen times in the first couple hours. My wife had no chance at all. This is not a game for new players by any stretch, it's punishing. One of the first few missions has you participating in 2 fist fights, engaging in a high speed chase, then chasing a man on foot through a building and ending with a third fistfight, but this time the enemy has a knife. I died 4 times, my wife still hasn't beaten the mission. The problem is compounded by the fact that the context-sensitive help is up in the corner and only prints when you really need it. As you may imagine, when you really need help is when you're attempting to wrestle a large truck through traffic at 90mph. I think there's about half the features of the game that I'm missing. And god help you if you have a small TV. I have a 100" TV and I had to squint to read the words on the character's cell phone. Unacceptable.

Aside from the characters and the big initial loading time, it's the controls that really get me. First, the driving controls. They're overly sensitive, sending your car careening into the nearest light pole unless you have a VERY soft touch on the stick. After a few hours I was able to control the vehicles well enough, but it took a lot more practice than I expected. Also, the left stick inexplicably controls the motion of the car AS WELL AS THE CAMERA. So if you're steering into a tight turn and you accidentally press UP a little, the camera zooms down to underneath the rear bumper, leaving you physically and metaphorically looking up your own tailpipe while you drive straight into a light pole. Again, lots of practice and a soft touch gets you around that problem, but it's just unacceptable to me. The right stick's Y axis performs the EXACT SAME FUNCTION as the left stick's Y axis, the left stick functionality seems to be included specifically to make the game more difficult. The problem is compounded by the fact that the default camera position is slightly too low to be useful, you have to constantly nudge one of the sticks down in order to see directly in front of your car. When it becomes a real issue I have to switch to first person mode so I can see what I'm about to hit. Also, cornering in the vehicles is almost impossible, made more frustrating by the fact that in the many chase sequences your targets seem able to corner on a dime. I had to approach every corner and slam on the brakes (as well as the handbrake, your actual brakes are sort of useless at 80+mph) then come down to about 15mph to make the turn. That being said, just driving around is really fun, if you don't need to turn sharply, see where you're going, or slow down. Since the punishment for death is 10% of your current cash, you should spend an hour or so tearing around the city, crashing into stuff.

Where the driving controls are overly sensitive, controlling Niko on foot is like gently coaxing a flock of kittens to go where you want. Running around on foot is difficult and annoying, which may be purposeful, it forces you to give up navigating on foot and steal a car to go down the block to the hotdog stand, strip club, or pool hall. In one mission you have to kill someone by throwing him off a roof. Once my character completed this act, he whipped out his cell phone to call the man who ordered the hit to announce it was complete (that's another thing, haven't these crooks heard of phone LUDs?). However, the animation for "whip out your cell phone" causes your character to take a step or two forward, bringing my guy perilously close to the edge of the roof. So I pulled back on the stick, which (of course) caused Niko to turn around, and take one giant step backward off the roof. Fighting on foot is also a little awkward, though with practice it shouldn't be a problem. After my fifth or sixth fistfight I was very good at the counter-combo, making GTA IV's fight system identical to Assassin's Creed's. Gunplay is a little more fun, there's a cover system, which is standard fare for a modern shooting game, and you get a target lock-on as well as a free-aim mode, and simply holding the fire trigger will cause Niko to fire as fast as he can. All in all, the gunplay is boring, though. Maybe later on it will get harder, but I could have won each firefight by putting a rubber band around LT and RT and going to get a sandwich.

There are other minor annoyances, like how when you get out of a vehicle your weapon switches back to the weapon you were holding when you got into the vehicle. This sounds fine at first, but when you're driving down the highway trading shotgun blasts with a police cruiser and then your car catches fire, you dive out, and come up facing the police cruiser and then...punch the air over and over as they gun you down...it gets a little annoying.

So all in all, really this is a meta review. GTA IV is a good game. Awesome, even. The main character so far is difficult to relate to, the other characters are annoying, the controls are slightly frustrating (but get better with practice), and the game is punishingly difficult in some instances and too easy in others. However, the bottom line is if you can get past those things it's fun. You get to steal cars, take on violent missions, run from the cops, and life a criminal's life in Liberty city. The fact that it got a 10.0 from EVERYONE is what really gets me. This game is not perfect. It's good, but it's not perfect. Think of it this way: have you ever read a movie review where the reviewer said "this movie definitely deserves an oscar, even though the camera sometimes doesn't point at their faces and it's hard to understand what anyone is saying"?